It was case #4 I was having so much trouble with, so I bought some #3s figuring that they might match available docs better.

They did, and it gave me a clue as to why the #4 boards didn’t program.

The ATTiny85 is programmed via a slightly non-standard Arduino service called Micronucleus. Micronucleus goes straight to the USB hardware. And by straight, I mean that it doesn’t even expect the device in question to be a named OS device. In Linux, that means nothing appears under /dev when you plug the ATTiny USB device in.

I installed the udev rules given for Ubuntu into my Fedora system. I haven’t dissected them, but I’m pretty sure that that’s what they’re for – capturing the hotplug of the ATTiny device and keeping it from mapping to /dev. The access rules given were 0666 and by reading carefully over available documentation I learned that often running the Micronucleus utility as root would clear up the error I was getting: “Assertion `res >= 4′ failed.”

666 doesn’t allow “execute” rights, so maybe on Fedora that’s a problem. The other alternative would be an selinux problem, but my audit logs don’t seem to indicate that.

So, by running the entire IDE as root (pending further discovery), I can now upload to the DigiSpark. Once I had the case #3 units, the case #4 units worked as well. Apparently they’re essentially identical except for their connection hardware.

I’m now poised to enjoy this inexpensive but useful little device. All is not forgiven, which is why I leave my original complaints posted. But at least I no longer have a box of useless parts.